U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in Guatemala today for
a regional security summit to help Central American governments
come up with a plan to fight the growing presence of Mexico's
brutal drug cartels.

As
we have noted, Mexico's five-year war on drugs has pushed the
traffickers - and violence - across the country's southern border
into the Central American isthmus.

The cartels have moved easily into Guatemala, El Salvador and
Honduras, taking advantage of minimal border security and local
gangs that provide a ready-made criminal infrastructure. More
than two-thirds of U.S.-bound cocaine shipments traveled through
the region last year, up from just one quarter in 2006, according
to U.S. data.

The region is now among the world's deadliest, with an average
homicide rate of 33 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to UN
figures. The Central American Integration System - which is
hosting this week's summit - reports that drug violence has been
responsible for 79,000 homicides over the past six years.

The problem is particularly acute in Guatemala, where last month
authorities found
27 bodies decapitated and brutalized by Mexico's Los Zetas
cartel. The prosecutor investigating the crime was also
murdered. Last week, Guatemala's President Alvaro Colom extended
the state of emergency in the northern border province Peten,
which is now almost completely controlled by Los Zetas.

The Washington Post gives
this account of the situation along the Mexico-Guatemala
border:

"Two reporters traveled 500 miles over the border’s roads and
rivers last week. To call this boundary “porous” would be to
suggest that parts of it are not. For the indigenous peoples,
ranch hands and smugglers who traverse it freely, there is no
border at all. It is a line on a map.

On the Suchiate River near the Pacific Coast, boatmen pole
makeshift rafts through the currents like gondoliers, ferrying
beans, gasoline, beer and diapers into Mexico or Guatemala in
plain view of authorities. The trafficking is so well established
that ferrymen from Mexico and Guatemala alternate work days on
the river."

At the security summit this week, Colom and his fellow Central
American presidents are expected to ask the U.S. for $1 billion
to help push back the cartels, in addition to the $200 million in
aid President Barack Obama promised earlier this year.

U.S. officials
told the AP Monday that more aid is unlikely. Instead, the
U.S. is focused on coming up with an approach that avoids simply
repeating the hardline military strategy that has been the pillar
of the U.S. drug wars in Colombia and Mexico. This time, they
said, the discussion will also look at economic and institutional
development issues, as well as ways the Central American
governments can
help themselves.